Something Tangible
by not without incident
Summary: Kitty catches John's attention.


_Sometimes I feel invisible. Which is ironic because my ability is to phase through things. But what if I simply phase my way through life? Always existing but never really tangible. My family's made it clear they don't want me around. I know that's the case for most of us here at the mansion but it sucks. Who am I after this? _

_Katherine Anne._

_Kitty Pryde._

_Shadowcat?_

"Pyro?"

The questioning voice caught him off guard and he almost dropped the A5 navy blue notebook held in his hands. He turned around quickly, perhaps too quickly, hiding the notebook behind his back with one hand. The other hand retreated to his hoodie pocket, fingers slipping around the smooth surface of his Zippo.

"Hey," he replied with a nod.

It was Jubilee. She looked a little more stressed out than usual. The usual look of apathy mixed with mirth was gone from her face, replaced by furrowed eyebrows, clenched jaw, slightly crazy eyes. "You borrowed my history notes from yesterday. Where are they?"

"Woah, woah." Pyro arched an eyebrow, tilting his head up a couple inches. "I put them back."

"Where's back? Because I can't find them."

"By the rest of your stuff in the library, right where you were before lunch."

Click. Snap. Click. Snap.

Jubilee growled, stamped her foot as she made to leave but then stopped in her tracks. "You haven't seen one of Kitty's notebooks either have you?"

This question stopped Pyro's incessant fondling of his Zippo lid. "Her notebook?" he asked innocently.

"Yes." Jubilee rubbed her index and middle finger against her temple, shutting her eyes briefly. "She says she misplaced it somewhere."

"Why do you always come to me when stuff goes missing? I'm not a klepto."

"Pyro!" Her voice grew sharp. She dropped the hand from her head and sighed. "I really don't have time for your bullshit. I asked a simple yes or no question. Just… yes or no?"

"I'm gonna say no?" Pyro cleared his throat and his expression changed to one of faux sympathy. "Maybe you should pop a couple Midol and call it a day."

"Haha. Fuck off." Jubilee turned and left him alone.

The smirk on the fire mutant's face gradually faded as Jubilee disappeared from sight. He brought the small blue notebook back around to his line of vision and opened the first page.

_Kitty Pryde's Thoughts and Rants: __Where I can express my_

The sentence was unfinished and crossed out. A few lines down there were more crossed out words that Pyro couldn't decipher and then near the very bottom of the page was a colourful Lisa Frank kitten sticker.

This made Pyro smile. A real smile. A smile he'd never be caught dead wearing.

Perhaps he was not a kleptomaniac but he wasn't ever entirely honest either. He'd picked up Kitty's notebook from the library while returning Jubilee's notes to her binder. Neither girl was around then, in fact the room had been empty. Their belongings were still spread out over the area they'd sat during the professor's lecture. After placing Jubilee's notes amidst her other organized chaos, he was about to leave when the small blue notebook caught his eye.

It was leather with a built in silver bookmark, one of those smooth shimmery ones. Pyro honestly had no idea what it was when he picked it up. It seemed abandoned in its place on the floor, probably accidently dropped and then kicked back underneath the sofa.

As anyone would, he immediately began flipping through the pages. Normally, he wasn't a big reader but the handwriting did something to pique his interest. It was unsteady and cramped and in some places quite difficult to read. He was about to throw it back down on the floor when on one of the pages he caught his name. Not Pyro, but John. The passage read:

_Went to movies today. It was actually lots of fun. I sat by John. At first he kept making that annoying sound with his lighter, but when I asked him to stop he did. His movie commentary is really hilarious. I think he made me laugh more than Ben Stiller._

After that, Pyro scanned a few more of the pages, slower this time but there were many pages full of writing. That's when he decided to _borrow_ the notebook for a while, to do some more reading. He hadn't expected Kitty to come to miss it so soon.

It wasn't safe to be reading Kitty's private thoughts in public, not in the hallways where anyone could walk past. Pyro shoved the diary into his hoodie pocket, covering the exposed corner with his arm and walked briskly to back to his dorm room. There were a few more hours before dinner where he'd have plenty time to get to know Kitty a little bit better.


End file.
